All familiar characters belong to Janet. The mistakes are mine alone.

As I would expect, a cell well-check wasn't enough ... Tank, Bobby, and Lester, coincidentally showed up almost before the media did. A disaster happening where we are, or even just nearby, is unacceptable to my men, and they immediately hauled ass to where they knew we could need them.

"It wasn't my fault," Steph said upon seeing three familiar but tense faces, hoping to get the men to relax a bit.

"So we heard. You two really are okay?" Tank asked.

"Yes," I told them. "The restaurant Stephanie and I were in, isn't hooked up to the same gas line."

"We'd just ordered when this happened," Steph added, still trying to convince them that we made it unscathed through another disaster. "Talk about an interruption."

"Fuck … I'll buy you two Happy Meals, a pizza, and one of those abandoned birthday cakes you like, on the way home," Bobby told her, "just because I'm so fucking happy to see that you're still standing."

"Careful ... your emotions are showing," Steph teased.

"Fuck emotions. This was too fucking close. I know we joke about wanting more time with the Olive Pit, but not because her parents are gone."

"We can protect you from bad guys with guns," Lester stated. "We can locate and eliminate a threat better and faster than anyone else, and also intercept any suspicious people or packages, but how the fuck do we protect you two against something like this?"

"You can't, but we did survive it," I assured them. "You all know it takes a lot to kill either of us, let alone both at the same time."

Nothing rattles my men, they've seen and have done too much shit to be scared of anything, but being trained until they can't be trained anymore and still not be able to always prevent close calls, pisses them off more than anything else could.

"You free to go?" Tank asked.

"Of course we are, since we weren't the cause," she reminded them.

She finally got a ghost of a grin from everyone except Tank. "We didn't tell Ella ..." he began, but Steph interrupted.

"Uh-oh. She's going to be pissed when she finds out you left without telling her about this."

"Did you call her?" Santos asked her.

"No. Even if she knows we're fine, she'd worry ... which could freak Olive out. We figured it'd be better to wait until we got home to tell her."

"Let's head out then," I told the group.

Twenty minutes later, Steph and I could hear Olivia crying as I unlocked our apartment door. Ella looked even more upset than our daughter. She was holding Olive, gently bouncing her own body to try soothe our baby while Gunny and Mo followed them as Ella paced the length of the hallway leading from the front door to the kitchen, our dogs whimpering in sympathy. They don't know why Olivia is crying, but they wanted it stopped.

"I honestly don't know what happened," Ella told us. "For almost an hour after you left, she was sleeping like the little angel she is. I poked my head in just to check on her not all that long ago, and by the time I'd made it back into the kitchen, she was crying uncontrollably."

Steph glanced at me as she took Olive from Ella once we ditched our coats. Chest to chest, with our daughter's head tucked under her chin, Steph hugged her before sliding her hand soothingly along our daughter's back. Olivia's face is bright red, her beautiful brown eyes remained scrunched closed as large tears continued to pour out of them, soaking Steph's skin. As her father, this is heartbreaking to watch. As her protector, it had me fighting rage because I didn't keep it from happening.

"Daddy and I are home," Steph was saying to our daughter, "and boy did we miss you."

Olive produced two more hiccuping cries and her hand moved against her Mama until it made a tiny fist around the strap of Stephanie's dress. I kissed my daughter's crib-flattened hair and added my own hand and words to my wife's relief effort.

"You don't have to cry anymore, Olive. Mama and I are back with you."

I don't know if she was listening to me or just reacting to her mother's touch, but Olivia thankfully started to calm down. With her cheek pressed into Stephanie, Olive's eyes opened and locked onto mine, piercing me with a look from dark eyes that appear even bigger with her lashes now teared into spikes.

"I'm so sorry," Ella began. "I ..."

"It's not your fault, Ella," I assured her.

"Yeah," my wife added, resting her cheek against Olivia's head. "I could be wrong, but I think our daughter has the tingle too."

"Tingle?" Ella asked.

"I know this is going to sound weird, but my neck has always started to tingle whenever Ranger was within a hundred feet of me. And he seems to always know where I am, how I'm feeling, and if I'm about to walk into trouble. I'm afraid we may have put a combination of our two freak-feelings into our daughter."

"Babe."

"Do you doubt it?"

I had to answer honestly. "No."

"Why would Olivia be ... tingling?" Ella asked us. "You've gone on date nights before."

"Ummm ..." Steph started with.

Keeping Ella out of the loop for Olive's sake, sounds doable when you're not standing face to face with the woman. Knowing she rivals my mother when it comes to worrying about those she loves, I understand Steph's hesitation. Like with my men, the military has trained me not to be afraid of anything, even an irate surrogate mother.

"There were a string of explosions in the neighborhood where Stephanie and I were dining," I told her.

We were right not to say anything. Ella's hands grabbed her heart and her maternal gaze ran over us, looking for any sign of injury. That we are home, and had been having a conversation with her for the last six minutes, didn't matter. In her mind, we're back in the restaurant with the world exploding around us.

"We're okay," Steph told her. "And thankfully no one was seriously hurt beyond a man we helped needing shoulder surgery from an unfortunate store-sign/car meeting. Everyone seemed to have gotten out when they needed to, or luckily weren't there at the time."

"Oh my God! I could smell smoke on you from the moment you both came in, but at this time of the year, it's not uncommon for wood stoves to be used."

"We didn't want to upset you," I told her.

"Neither did Lester," Steph quickly added. "So our Rangeman-reinforcements snuck out when they heard the 911 call come in over one of their million scanners."

"No one told me there was a problem?" She asked. "Or that you were in danger?"

"For fear Olive would sense something was wrong," my wife answered, kissing our daughter's hair, "but she knew anyway."

"I'm so glad you both are alright. What a horrible thing to happen ... and have happen on your night out."

"It was," Steph said, glancing at me over Olivia's head, "but some good came from it. It made me appreciate my family even more. Speaking of family, thank you for taking such good care of our Olive. She's building quite a reputation for being hell on babysitters."

"She was an absolute angel," Ella repeated. "She just needed her Mommy and Daddy. I'll let myself out so you two can get her back to sleep."

"You're going to go track down Lester, aren't you?" I asked her.

"I may have a word or two with him before I let Louis know that I'm home."

"That was unexpected," I said to my wife, as we walked back to the nursery.

Knowing her world is right again, our daughter was relaxing back into sleep.

"Me ratting Lester out? I couldn't help it. Ella was tearing up and her temper was heating up. Bobby offered to buy me comfort food, Tank was doing that no talking/barely moving-thing he does when he's trying not to show anyone that he's upset, so that left Lester to be the one to calm Ella down."

"You're a scrappy fighter, Babe."

"Only when I have to be." She looked at me after I lifted Olivia to kiss her goodnight for the second time and gently lay her in her crib. "I get it now."

"Get what?"

"Why you were so angry your body would shoot actual sparks whenever I inserted myself into a potentially deadly situation. This is the only life we have, and one stupid move could've ended us long before we even got our life ... this life ... started."